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Judge's ruling holds up Applegate timber sale A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against the Bureau of Land Management, halting the North Murphy timber sale in the Applegate Valley. Judge William Dwyer in Seattle on Tuesday issued the injunction, along with a temporary restraining order, as a result of a 1998 lawsuit brought by 13 environmental groups which charged the BLM and the Forest Service with ignoring portions of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. The North Murphy sale, which includes about 4 million board feet of timber, is located in the mountains immediately north of Provolt. All told, about 100 timber sales, including more than two dozen in Southern Oregon, are included in the lawsuit. Superior Lumber Co. of Glendale was the high bidder in the North Murphy timber sale. BLM officials were unavailable for comment late Tuesday afternoon. Local groups filing the lawsuit included Ashland-based Headwaters and the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center in Williams. "If the agencies had followed the law two years ago, this lawsuit would not have been necessary," said Jay Lininger, a member of the Williams group. "The agency chose to tweak the rules, evading survey requirements." The exacting scientific requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan require that so-called survey-and-manage species such as rare salamanders be protected, even in forests earmarked for timber production. To find the survey-and-manage species, which include everything from amphibians to snails, foresters are required to conduct surveys in the right season and under the right conditions. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA